Zimbabwean journalists targeted amid pre-election tension

Cape Town, South Africa, June 18, 2013--All parties in Zimbabwe's
government of national unity must respect the responsibility of journalists to
document events and report the views of citizens, especially in the run-up to
the country's elections in July, the Committee to Protect Journalists said
today. In four different cases this month, reporters have been attacked
apparently in connection with their coverage of the country's two major
political parties.

"The new constitution, which was supported by an overwhelming
majority of voters in March, guarantees freedom of expression. We urge the
leaders of all political parties to insist on discipline and restraint from
their members and to stop targeting journalists," said CPJ's Africa Program Coordinator
Sue Valentine. "Zimbabweans have
a right to receive information about the political, social, and economic
conditions in which they live, and to make informed decisions about who their
next government should be."

On June 14, three masked assailants briefly abducted freelance
journalist Paul Pindani from his home in Chinhoyi in north central Mashonaland
West province and beat him, news reports said. James
Muonwa, the Mashonaland West correspondent for NewsDay and the vice
president of the local chapter of the Zimbabwean Union of Journalists, told CPJ
the journalist had been hospitalized with injuries that included a broken arm
and bruises.

Muonwa told CPJ that Pindani had been attacked in connection with an
unbylined June 11 story in NewsDay
that said an alleged member of the ruling ZANU-PF party had been arrested on
charges of fatally assaulting a local businessman. Muonwa told CPJ that the
attackers had assumed Pindani was the author as he was the most widely known
journalist living in Chinhoyi, but that Pindani was not the author of the
report. Muonwa said that the day before the attack, Pindani had told him he had
been threatened in connection with the story. Police were investigating the
attack, but had not made any arrests, he said.

The upcoming elections will end the power-sharing agreement between
President Robert Mugabe's Zimbabwe African National Union Patriotic Front
(ZANU-PF) and Prime Minister Morgan Tsvangirai's faction of the Movement for
Democratic Change (MDC-T). Elections under
Zimbabwe's new constitution are scheduled for July 31, but the date is being
challenged by opposition parties who want the vote to take place at least a
month later.

The attack on Pindani follows three other assaults on journalists
this past month, all allegedly perpetrated by security officers or supporters
of the Tsvangirai-led faction of the MDC. On June 6, Mashudu
Netsianda, reporter for the state-owned Chronicle, was detained briefly while covering
a meeting between Tsvangirai and businessmen in Bulawayo, news reports said. His
notebook was confiscated and his recordings were deleted, the reports said. The
following day, Zimbabwe Independent
journalist Herbert Moyo was assaulted
as he tried to report on MDC members protesting against
the choice of
candidate for their constituency. On June 8,
Bernard Mapwanyire, a reporter for the private Masvingo Mirror, said
he had been roughed up while covering MDC-T primary elections, the reports
said.

Nelson Chamisa, organizing secretary of the MDC-T, told SW Radio Africa that
his party has been a victim of violence and said the attacks were abominable
and unacceptable. Chamisa said they were investigating the attacks, which could
have been the work of "infiltrators" attempting to portray the faction as
violent.

Dumisani
Muleya, editor of the Zimbabwe
Independent, told CPJ that the
recent spate of assaults was a sign of growing hostility among MDC
officials toward public criticism about how it had performed in the government.
"They're not used to such criticism," he said. "The actions of the youths
[assaulting people] is a result of the pronounced and unpronounced anger and
sensitivity," he said.